“My wife has been through hell,” Boyle wrote in an email to the AP. “She has to be my first priority right now.”

Boyle claims their captors raped his wife and forced her to abort a fourth child, though the Taliban denies both accusations. Coleman had a “natural miscarriage,” according to a statement from Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

Boyle believes they were abducted because “it was well-known by the eventual-kidnappers that Caitlan was heavily pregnant,” he explained in an email to the Canadian Press. “[The captors] spoke often immediately following the kidnapping that ‘America will pay for you very quickly, America will not want to risk the baby is born here in prison.’”

He described the conditions of their detention as “remarkably barbaric” and said he and his wife were often separated and beaten.